Facebook Marketing Guide

Facebook has over a billion users all over the world and powerful tools to help you make good money online. If you want to be able to tap into this huge pool of users, you need to carefully plan your strategy and constantly measure against clearly defined goals.

This step-by-step approach will help you grow your Facebook page and maximize your return.

Step 1: Establish Your Goals

What results do you want to achieve with your Facebook Page? How do you want to use it to grow your business?

Here are some Facebook marketing goals to consider as you develop your plan:

Increase Brand Awareness and Overall Exposure. The more people “Like” your page, the wider your reach across their own network of friends.

Create a Loyal, Dynamic Community. This goal can be measured through engagement metrics like the “People Talking About This” metric:

Collect Leads. You can turn your Facebook fans into leads by adding an email opt-in form to your Facebook page and encourage your fans to subscribe to your list.

Get Sales. Your Facebook page is a great place to promote special discounts and offers and fans can purchase easily with a link back to your website. Take for example, 1-800-Flowers, who has a special “Fan Offer!” tab on their Facebook Page:

This is an elegant (and easy) way to sell directly from your Facebook page.

Whatever goals you set up for your Facebook page, make sure you make them specific, measurable, attainable and, above all, realistic.

Step 2: Do Your Research

Now that you’ve established your goals, it’s time to gather all the resources to make it happen. In this case, it’s getting to know your target demographic and your competition.

Research Your Competition. You can “spy” on your competition and see what works for them. Simply enter your keyword (e.g. “los angeles yoga studio” in the search box and do a basic Facebook search:

Step 3: Build Your Strategy

Now that you have set your goals and researched the market, it’s time to create your strategy. Here is how:

Set Up An Editorial Calendar

First, you’ll nee to schedule all your activities. Use Hootsuite, it is a powerful (and free) social media management tool:

Here is a free Facebook (and Twitter) editorial calendar template you can use to brainstorm ideas and organize your posts in a more visual manner.

Keep Your Content Fresh.

Constantly serve fresh and interesting content, including links to other people’s content, photos, videos, mentions, etc. Great content is very important because people who return to your page regularly are more likely to buy from you in the future.

Keep Your Updates Short and Sweet.

No one wants to see a novel in their Facebook feed. You need to share witty, short, and hearty updates so you can stir the interest of your audience and they would actually want to click on your link so they can find out more. You should also consider that people access Facebook on mobile, thus they cannot spend too much time reading a long text. Intrigue them, give them a teaser that will make them interested.

Post Interesting Questions.

Keep your audience engaged by asking questions that are relevant to them. People would normally want to share their own insights and this will create engagement across your target market. Just make sure your questions are interesting enough to solicit answers and comments.

Communicate with Your Fans.

Asking questions about people’s experience with your products and services helps to engage them and increase their loyalty to your brand, plus collect valuable feedback and provide exceptional customer service.

Facebook Notes.

This is a less-known method but, if done right, it can be highly profitable. Facebook Notes are almost like having your own blog right inside of Facebook. It works exactly the same as doing article marketing on blogs.

For example, if you are promoting a dog training product, you can start a Facebook group or a fan page for dog owners. Groups and fan pages are two of the best places to run specific, targeted campaigns for products. Once you have a fan page, you can start creating Facebook Notes and insert your affiliate links into the content.

Step 4: Measure Your Progress

Facebook Insights is a great tool to track your activities and see which posts are working for you, so you can duplicate and scale. Here you can get specific metrics around your content so you can understand and analyze trends within your target market and continually fine-tune your strategy.

If you want to get successful at Facebook marketing, you need to understand your target audience really well and experiment with Facebook’s targeting options. The more you test, the more data you have for further optimizing your strategies, weeding out under-performing tactics and scaling up the ones that bring you the best results.

Streamlining your strategies as aligned with users’ preferences and behavior on Facebook will help you build brand awareness using the platform. Investing in strategies on how you can leverage on this social media platform will surely bring in significant returns since Facebook has already captured a big audience in itself.

Summing Up

Facebook provides tremendous targeting capabilities, so you can test various angles and strategies until you find the winning formula to grow your social audience and make more money.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different variables, like images, times of day for sharing content, tone, humor, type of content (text vs. photos or videos) and always pay attention to what your fans talk about on Facebook. Get to know these guys and give them what they want.

Remember, happy customers mean repeat customers and more money in the bank for you. With these suggested strategies, you can enjoy more likes, more followers, and more people will get to know about what you can offer.